Andrew Street
If you were looking for an unbiased opinion on SEO for dealerships from an SEO prodigy that specialized in the US military strategy for years. You’re in the right place. I’m Andrew Street. I’m the owner of Dealer OMG. We exist to help dealers eliminate cookie cutter ads. Chris Kirksey is here with me. He’s the owner of direction.com. He went out to a NASCAR event with me last weekend and he’s been my SEO guru. I don’t claim to, to be a specialist in SEO. And he was talking about the four drivers for SEO. Uh, Chris, you wanna jump right in? 

Chris Kirksey
Yeah, why not? Thanks, Andrew. So, the four biggest drivers for SEO, especially for dealerships, I’d say number one, local, uh, local seo, focusing on your Google business profile. Uh, everything to get that to rank, which is local, direct, getting listed, local directories. Um, and from there making sure all the information on your business profile is coexisting everywhere online, your website, and then from there, content creation on your website, uh, and off your website, kind of back links, uh, so other sites linking to your site, showing that you’re an authority in the industry. Uh, relevant links. So other, if you’re in the auto industry, you ideally want links from auto blogs or any other dealerships linking to your blogs or your information as a source of information. So if you, you know, put out things like infographics, uh, about different types of vehicles that gets shared, uh, it can link back to your site. That helps a lot. And then from there, technical SEOs. Technical SEO kind of scares people because it sounds technical, not everyone’s technical. And the biggest thing with that is optimizing for the user experience. So when I say technical, it’s making sure the website is fast, it loads quickly, uh, it gives the user what they want. You want to convert the user. At the end of the day, if you work on all the factors I originally stated with local seo, with content, with back links, but you can’t convert the person that visits your site after you did all that work to get them there. At the end of the day, it’s all useless. So making sure that your site loads quickly, making sure that you have call actions, uh, that stand out. Get people to click on it. Uh, make sure you have easy ways for people to talk to you. You know, click to call phone numbers, all the basics, contact forms, maybe scheduling form, things like that. Uh, and that’s in short, the top four things. 

Andrew Street
Okay. And you said the speed that your website loads. So SEO, search engine optimization, so it’s Google is number one, two, and three and then we’ve got Bing and we’ve got other, whatever, other platforms. But if you have that website that loads quickly, Google like recognizes that and it’s a good user experience. They can see that people are spending a lot, a lot of time on the website. 

Chris Kirksey
Yeah, so that’s, um, you, you can always measure how long people are spending on your site and the bounce rate and things like that through Google Analytics. And Google likes to fry just about any website. So no matter how fast you think your website is, Google will be probably give it all these bad looking grades. And it might scare you if you try to run your site through a Google site audit. Um, but don’t even worry, basically. You wanna make it faster than your competition. That’s the biggest thing. So if your competitor sites all load in four to five seconds and your loads in three, great, it doesn’t need a load in under a second. It just needs to be better than the rest. And the faster loads, sure the better, but I wouldn’t lose sleepover 0.2 seconds, 0.3 seconds, things like that. Uh, I wouldn’t get too involved in the little details as long as it loads quickly and you can access it from different devices well and it loads quickly on different, uh, you know, speeds of internet connection. Great. 

Andrew Street
Yeah. And I imagine like the, the algorithms of what’s really geared, what’s really fueling the SEO results is constantly changing. Is that right? 

Chris Kirksey
That’s correct. 

Andrew Street
So it’s like, if it’s the back links, it’s the, the content from our website. If it’s the technical SEO and the build out of our website or you know, the local SEO that we’re doing through Google Business listings. There’s not one of those that reigns Supreme for local businesses is there?

Chris Kirksey
Well, so when you’re talking about updates like Google algorithm updates, keep in mind that those are always to help better the user experience. So you Google kind of released update just to filter out bad content or filter out spammy techniques like, you know, specific types of backlink building where you’re using the same word over and over and over again. You know, buying back links is a big frowned upon scheme. Uh, there, there’s, at the same time, you know, a lot of people do it. Uh, it is just the way that it’s done has to be strategic and ideally you want to get backlinks from being great at what you do, meaning you produce great content. People are talking about you online because they’re super happy with the experience they had at your dealership, and maybe they have a blog and they wrote about it. Um, you’re putting out infographics that people share on other sites. Uh, you you’re doing things that get people to want to talk about you. That’s the best way to do it. But yeah, in terms of algorithm updates, as long as you’re doing everything correctly and you’re not trying to game the system in any way. 99% likelihood that you don’t have to worry about algorithm updates. You probably should smile when they happen if you’re doing everything right. Cuz that means it’s gonna probably help you. 

Andrew Street
Right. It’s gonna squeeze out the competition that’s doing at the, the dodgy way. Exactly. Uh, and it sounds like the low, the low hanging fruit is for us to just get on– it’s no longer Google my business. It’s Google Business listing. 

Chris Kirksey
Profile. 

Andrew STreet
Google Business Profile.

Chris Kirksey
GBP 

Andrew Street
And it changed its name. Did anything else change except for the name change? 

Chris Kirksey
There’s a lot. Uh, so when you go to, uh, optimize your business profile or anything like that, usually you would go to business.google.com to make any changes. But Google’s trying to make it so that you edit it right there on their main search page, which is a little different. There’s a l a bunch of little different things they’re doing here and there. Uh, they say it’s better this way, it’s just gonna take some people, some getting used to in terms of different UI/UX. Um, but Google has been also getting really tough on fake reviews. 

Andrew Street
Mm-hmm. 

Chris Kirksey
So that’s something that, uh, we’ve been seeing a lot of is. Bunch of different Google business profiles losing their reviews that they had published before. And sometimes they’re even real reviews. Um, but there’s so many different factors and Google doesn’t even tell you why.

They, they’ll just remove it. They won’t even say why. They’ll just say, yep, this looks spammy. And then if you ask ’em, they just say, yep, it didn’t adhere to our, uh, standards, and here’s a link. And then it’s like a hundred thousand pages of their policies and standards. You have no idea why they did what they did?

Andrew Street
And then this– so that would, at the end of the day, we wanted to sell and service more cars. And then one of the zillion components is all the different ways that dealerships can advertise from billboards to paid search to SEO being a component that you can get somebody in house to start providing content, somebody to drive backlinks from affiliates, somebody to be constantly updating photos with the Google Business listing. I keep saying it wrong. Google profile. Yeah, I mean Google Business profile. And then, uh, what’s the result? Okay, so now that we’re publishing a lot of stuff on Google Business Profile, we’re getting our backlinks, we’re getting the content on our website. My understanding, and I hope I’m wrong, cuz this was a long like it used to be to where you’d have our organic ranking in Google climb up higher for when somebody’s gonna type in keywords that are not really branded for my store, but they’re typing in used F-150 s near me or used F-150 s in Austin where we are. And is that still the case or is it branched out to include Google Maps and other platforms besides just that search result? 

Chris Kirksey
Well, Google is getting highly localized in their search results. So sometimes even when you type in a location or don’t type in a location or don’t use near me, they’ll still show you places near you. Uh, so if you’re searching for specific new vehicles, use vehicles, um, and you don’t add a location or anywhere, sometimes you’ll see the map results, sometimes you won’t. Um, but the maps are the absolute most important thing to optimize. And especially as a dealership, because most people are not gonna be ordering vehicles from their house and they don’t care where it comes from. Uh, most people do want to go test drive the car. They go wanna go at least see the car. And optimizing your Google business profile is gonna be essential for you to show up. So even if they aren’t searching for you specifically as a dealership, but. In your Q&As on Google business profile, you know, you’re put, you’re posting questions and answers in terms of what kind of card you sell or do you have used, you know, do you sell used trucks? Put in the question and answer, yes, we sell used F-150 s, we sell used, uh, you know, Ram 2500s. We, uh, Chevy 1500s, whatever the truck is. If you have that information in your, uh, question and answer section on your business profile, Google sees that. I mean, you’re literally publishing it to Google. So Google now–

Andrew Street
Right? So now once people say Chevrolet, uh, Silverado at, uh, 1500s, and you’ve got that in your business profile under your Q&As that you’ve created those q those questions yourself and answers. 

Chris Kirksey
Yep. 

Andrew Street
It’s gonna likely prioritize you over the busters across town who aren’t doing anything. 

Chris Kirksey
Yeah. I mean, especially if they’re not doing anything, the more content you’re putting out that’s actually useful the better you’re gonna perform. When there, there’s, uh, you can add products, your vehicle listings, you can add all of that to your business profile. And one, uh, piece of low hanging fruit that, you know, I recently purchased a new car from a dealership, uh, the other month, and I, when I was searching, I didn’t see anybody putting videos on their business profile. That’s huge. Low hanging fruit. Uh, Google Business Profile does allow you to add a video to your listing. 

Andrew Street
And it sounds like they’re re rewarding people for doing that. 

Chris Kirksey
Oh yeah. If you’re adding content that’s, you know, valuable, useful information, uh, it always helps. 

Andrew Street
Yeah. It’s like, it’s like when Facebook and YouTube and Instagram come out with reels and different types of, uh, ways to, to published media, they’ll, they’re gonna really promote that new feature just to see if they can get adoption with it. And it sounds like with Google Business Profile, if you can upload a video and it’s sort of new and sexy in their mind. And if we as a business start to do it, they’re gonna say, thanks, let me give you some love.

Chris Kirksey
Yeah, absolutely. And especially, you know, there’s so many things you can do with the Google business posts. Uh, that’s huge. Low hanging fruit. 

Andrew Street
What would you post any, like what? 

Chris Kirksey
This is your opportunity to stand out and get people to choose you that you, this is, yeah, huge. It’s an ad, right? Don’t think of Google business posts as a post you would post a social media like, Hey, check out our new blog. We wrote about how– 

Andrew Street
Yeah, it’s our service director’s birthday. Here’s Tim and his balloons. 

Chris Kirksey
No, the what you want. If somebody is looking at your business profile and they still haven’t visited your website, they still haven’t called, they still haven’t visited, like hit directions. Well guess what? By the time they get to the posts, that’s your basically last opportunity to make an impact you need. 

Andrew Street
So it could be updated, uh, OEM incentives of 5,000 off MSRP for, uh, 2023 F-150 s. 

Chris Kirksey
Yeah. 

Andrew Street
Or it could be, um, an offer or it could be, uh, something that’s unique to the dealer. Like, uh, test drive from your driveway. We deliver to a radius of something. 

Chris Kirksey
Yeah. I mean, even if you say, “Come in today, Tuesday, April 4th, before five o’clock, and we’re having a drawing and we’re giving away $5,000 in, uh, certificates.” That will get somebody to get off their butt and right drive to your dealership, and maybe five other people didn’t do it, and maybe he wins a thousand dollars towards his next new vehicle. Guess what? You just got him to get up and go directly to the dealership. 

Andrew Street
Okay. And now from the SEO perspective of Google loving My Business, they’re gonna see that people are engaging with our Google business profile. And that’s the SEO juice from the content. Oh, they’re gonna also see that we’re, we’re actively publishing content in there.

Chris Kirksey
I’d say all the above. You know when the, well, the cool thing is you can see all the analytics of how people are interacting with your Google Business profile in Google Business Profile. So you can log in and you can see which posts performed best, which ones got people to click, which one, how many views did it get. Um, and this is all, you know, we track this for everybody through our software. Uh, You can track all the data of everything you post, and you can see every month how many people click to your website, how many people click to call, how many people click to visit, uh, visit, like hit the directions button. Uh, and the more you optimize, the more you can see over time. You know, obviously there’s different types of times of the year that people buy cars versus others, but you can measure year over year or you know, month over month, week over week and kind of get an idea of, okay, well people are clicking on. You know, every time we publish a Ford F-150 in our vehicle feed, um, that we have that, that gets more clicks than, for example, the, uh, Ford Explorer. So it looks like more people are looking for the F-150 in March, and more people are looking for explorers in April. You can start use that and over time, the more data you collect, the better you can publish exactly what people want and give them the offers they want. And all this information that you’re putting in your Google Business Profile, I mean, it’s literally on Google it’s being posted to Google. So Google better understands your brand, who you are, what you sell. And that’s gonna help not just in your Google, uh, Business Profile, but in your organic rankings as well. They’ll better understand your site. You’re gonna have, uh, more visits to different pages on your site. Cause when you publish an offer, you publish a vehicle, you know, you have the opportunity to put the link to the page of the vehicle or to a page of that offer. Um, Google’s gonna see all this new traffic to your site. And if people are clicking around to other pages, it’s gonna lower the balance rate. If they’re staying on for a few minutes, you’re gonna have a great retention rate. Google’s going, Google’s measuring all this and analyzing all this to understand, is this what people were looking for? If so, okay, next time I’m gonna show it a little bit higher. 

Andrew Street
And this is super anecdotal. It’s just from an exercise that I just did. But it seems like they’re really in, they’re really helping to prioritize people who are actively doing those posts. And if they’re good posts, especially maybe cropped right and doing links to the website, to the appropriate pages. Or, we just looked at Ford F-150 near me and it popped up. You, you scrolled down past the vehicle listing ads past the paid search results. A couple organic listings of, uh, the third party marketplace as it was like TrueCar.

Chris Kirksey
Yeah. 

Andrew Street
Then it popped up the, a list of everything that would come up in the map, and it was a paid dealership, but then it was a two dealerships. One of ’em that outranked, the other one had, didn’t have as good of reviews. It had fewer reviews. 

Chris Kirksey
Yeah. 

Andrew Street
But the only difference was it had content being publish to the posts and Google Business Profile, so that could be good evidence that that’s a big, that’s a big indicator right now how your dealership’s gonna rank. 

Chris Kirksey
Absolutely. 

Andrew Street
Is that right? 

Chris Kirksey
Yeah, absolutely. It was a huge indicator. I mean, we were looking, I remember it had like 2000 reviews, a four star rating, and then, and that was in the number one spot, organically in the maps and then number two had like three, like 1200 more reviews, and it had a 4.4 star rating versus the four, yet it ranked number two and not number one. So we were like, okay, let’s see what the heck is going on here. And it was pretty clear right up front. Oh look, the first result. Definitely had more content being published. They had posts talking about any specials and offers. They had. They had a large vehicle inventory. They had a lot of photos. Uh, they posted, I think they had like nine different question and answers. Where then when we clicked in the second one, even though it had higher ratings and more ratings there, people couldn’t find the same amount of information. There was, there was maybe one Q&A, I think we saw right, zero posts zero. Um, they did have an inventory vehicle, inventory feed. But I mean, when you’re not posting any updates or sales or specials, and you’re not putting up any common question and answers, I mean, your always trying to send people to the most helpful result.

Andrew Street
Okay? 

Chris Kirksey
And sure if you have better reviews, That’s good. Maybe that’s why you’re number two and not number six. 

Andrew Street
What, what’s a good resource for people like a, a good book or good blog? And feel free to plug, plug your software if you want.

Chris Kirksey
Yeah. I mean, you know, we, uh, our, our software direction local, you can find a direction.com. Uh, basically it helps publish information to your Google Business Profile and a bunch of other directories. Super simply, and it’s the easiest and fastest way to get found online on a ton of different directories. You can manage, you know, customer, uh, chats, communication, respond to reviews. So if you get a review from Yelp or Facebook or Google, you can respond right there for one platform. Our blog also has a lot of information around localists here, tips and tricks and strategies, and you know honestly, if you just google local SEO strategies for dealerships, you’ll probably find some great–

Andrew Street
Yeah, there’s a lot of players in the space. 

Chris Kirksey
There are. 

Andrew Street
But direction.com, dude, what a great domain you ended up with.

Chris Kirksey
Thank you. Yeah. 

Andrew Street
Very good. Um, and what else, how do, how do people get ahold of you if they wanna reach out to you directly? 

Chris Kirksey
Uh, so through the website you can schedule a demo, book a call. You know, you can also email me chris@direction.com. 

Andrew Street
Sweet. All right. And last thing, if we had the whole entire automotive industry captive for a few minutes, what should we let them know?

Chris Kirksey
So I would definitely say to focus a lot of efforts on your Google Business Profile. I mean, that’s gonna be– 

Andrew Street
That’s what it sounds like. 

Chris Kirksey
Yeah. It’s gonna be essential. Uh, because guess what, when people are searching, yes, SEO is extremely important. You know the results below the map pack, that’s super, super important. Uh, you are competing against big players like TrueCar, right? That have a lot of SEO power, and they’re literally whole game is SEO and they have entire teams dedicated to it. Um, sure you can compete against them. But you default win if you’re above them in the maps. So that’s gonna be essential. Now, I’m not saying ignore SEO on your website.

It’s extremely important because putting out information on your website, logging on your website, getting links from authoritative sources, um, you know, getting listed in directories, local directories, uh, vehicle directories, stuff like that. That’s all important. Um, but I would say if you can focus on providing great information and updating your business profile and getting, trying to get listed in new directories, you’re not listed in. So if you type in like, uh, vehicle dealer directories for vehicle, uh, dealerships, uh, you know, nextdoor.com is one. That’s one that we recently make uh, created an integration with for our. Um, a lot of people are on Nextdoor, so if you don’t have a business profile nextdoor.com, you’re probably missing out on some business. So, and that, you know, when your Business information is consistent everywhere, online, in a lot of different directories. It’s gonna help your local profile rank, so there’s on profile optimizations and off profile optimizations by getting listed to places. That’s what I would focus on. I mean, that’s, that’s gonna be– 

Andrew Street
Okay. There’s a lot. I mean, outside of like just running a car dealership is a monster in itself, and then to sort of be familiar with all these different channels. Well, Chris, I’m glad that there’s people like you out there serving the common good of the people and the small business and helping, uh, people understand and, and having a platform to do SEO.

Chris Kirksey
Yep. 

Andrew Street
Chris– 

Chris Kirksey
If I can say one more thing. One more thing before we jump off. Um, use AI. You can publish, you can, you can use AI to create this information for you that you’re publishing about the vehicle. You can use AI to, uh, if, if you think you’re not great at writing an ad for your Google Business post, throw it in a Chat GPT, throw it to Jasper and ask it to make it a better ad for you. Ask it to make it more captivating, more interesting. Uh, give it urgency, give it all these different, yes, these different, uh, strategies and, you know, using different types of, uh, words. And, and you have a, you have a list of prompt engineering prompts that you’ve discovered.

Andrew Street
Chris, he’s been my sensei for Chat GPT stuff too, because he’s been just living in there. Um, but a way to fuel tons of content in a what, 10% of the time? 

Chris Kirksey
Yeah. Uh, or less. I mean, you can, you can say to Jasper or Chat GPT, “Hey, create me a list of 20 offers for, uh, you know, Mercedes GLS. 

Andrew Street
Right. Or why, why mothers would like to have, uh, the Dodge Caravan.

Chris Kirksey
Yeah. 

Andrew Street
And then the 2023 Dodge Caravan. And then now you’re an editor, not a writer. 

Chris Kirksey
Yeah, exactly. 

Andrew Street
And um, and does this not mean SEO is gonna become easier and cheaper because chat bots can help fuel that, that conversation and fuel the content? 

Chris Kirksey
Absolutely. With the right prompts. Okay. You know, just asking Chat GBT to generate a list for you is not gonna create great content. So that’s why we posted a blog on direction.com about all these different prompts you can use to really create unique engaging content for users that doesn’t look like you just spun up some AI stuff. 

Andrew Street
Right. Then you can schedule that content to go on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. 

Chris Kirksey
Exactly. 

Andrew Street
Google Business Profile.

Chris Kirksey
Yeah. 

Andrew Street
I said it right the first time. Um, yeah, dude, chris direction.com. Chris Kirksey, man, I appreciate you, uh, hopping on and, and giving us your unbiased take on SEO. 

Chris Kirksey
Absolutely. Thanks for having me on, Andrew.